Argument Structure of Perception Verbs of Hearing in Persian within the Framework of Goldberg’s Construction Grammar

Perception verbs are important category of verbs in natural languages that express perceptual events related to human and other conscious creatures. The purpose of the present study is to explore the argument structure of perception verbs of hearing in Persian within the framework of Goldberg’s Construction Grammar (1995, 2006). The research data include a collection of 320 sentences of standard Persian extracted from the Hamshahri corpus, Persian Newspaper, (version 2). The results of the data analysis show that the perception verb ‘ʃænidæn’ (to hear), is the most polysemous Perception Verbs of Hearing in Persian that has 5 different meanings: hearing, listening, realizing, obeying, and scenting. In these different meanings, ‘ʃænidæn’ appears in 3 argument structure construction: [SUB + Nominal OBJ], [SUB + clausal OBJ], [SUB + Prepositional OBJ]. The other verbs of hearing also have their own argument structure construction which determines their semantics and syntax, but they are less polysemous than ‘ʃænidæn’. Based on the constructionist approach, it can be concluded that polysemy of the perception verbs of hearing is constructional polysemy which can be explained at the level of abstract and schematic constructions, rather than concrete words.